Meta

Creating a unique and useful e-book is one way for an affiliate marketer to stand out from the crowd. E-book creation is not as difficult as you may think. The beauty of producing an e-book product is that you can easily edit, expand and update it any time you wish.

I recommend that your first e-book is one that you offer as a free product to encourage your website visitors to sign up to your e-mail mailing list. Make sure your book is targeted at a niche market where people are eager buyers. Even though you are giving away your book, the aim is to promote yourself and indirectly, your products or affiliate products through the information that you provide in the book.

The best way to get your prospects to read your book is to focus on a particular problem or two that they may experience and explain to them the solution or solutions that are offered in the book with specific references to the pages where they can find them.

The information you provide should be thoroughly informative and genuinely useful to your target audience and should be written as an editorial review. But, do not make it into a sales letter.

The fact that your e-book is unique and targeted to a certain niche market will make it far more likely that visitors to your website will opt into your mailing list in order to access the information in your e-book.

So how do you research and write your e-book?

Start by doing some research on Google and on some of the major article directories such as Ezinearticles. Check out the questions people are asking on relevant forums. Create a file of information based on your reading.

Check other sources of information off-line, such as relevant magazines and books to find out what the hot items are.

Once you have completed your research, reduce everything to a rule of three. Divide your e-book creation process into three parts or chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. Tell the reader something about yourself and your business in the introduction and in the conclusion. These are also good places to add links to your website.

Also, the introduction is the place where you tell the readers what you will tell them in the main body of the e-book. The conclusion is the place where you summarize what you have told the reader in the main body of your e-book.

Each chapter can then be divided into three main points. Each point can consist of about 100 words. Each chapter should have an introduction and mini conclusion of its own.

This structure can be set out like this:

Introduction – 150 words

Chapter 1

– intro – 50 words

– points 1, 2 and 3 of about 100 words each

–conclusion – 50 words

Chapters 2 and 3 repeat the same format

Conclusion – 150 words

===
TOTAL = 1,500 words

The number of words in each chapter are purely guides. So if you genuinely have something of use to say, say it. The idea is just not to get too wordy.

–

Should you find each chapter of your e-book growing in size, then you may have enough material to write more than one book. Perhaps you could break it into an e-book series. Offer your first e-book free, and sell the follow-up volumes.

You can also spice up your e-book by adding tip boxes, graphics, checklists and so on.

Whenever you are discussing something relevant to one of your products, hyperlink an appropriate key phrase and point it to the relevant product. Just be sure not to overdo it.

Proof read the text before you publish it. At the very least you should run it through a spell check program. Unfortunately, spell check programs do not catch every mistake so it is advisable to print off a hard copy and go through it carefully and mark any places where you find problems with grammar, repetitive phrases, wrong versions of words (“there”/”their”) and so on.

E-book creation does take some work but need not be as intimidating as it may seem if you break it down into a series of easily accomplished tasks. If you create your own e-book you will stand out from your competition. You will also offer your website visitors a unique and useful product that may lead to an increase in sales. And, last but not least, you will retain 100% of the profit on any sales that you make as opposed to just a percentage of the sale of someone else’s product.